This study was conducted to provide basic data necessary to develop a program to improve infection control by examining nurses'' perception of accreditation and by identifying its relationship with awareness and performance of infection control.

The participants were 210 nurses working in one university hospital. Data were collected from May 14 through May 19, 2015.
The results of the study are as follows;

Nurses’ perception of accreditation was 3.10±0.54 points on the average out of 5 points. Awareness of infection control was 4.63±0.39 points. Performance of infection control was 4.39±0.39 points. Awareness of infection control was higher than performance of infection control.
Subordinate scopes of perception of accreditation showed highest points for awareness, and consecutively followed managerial performance, medical quality improvement, and internal customer satisfaction. Subordinate scopes of awareness of infection control showed highest points for isolation, and followed pneumonia control, hand hygiene, intravascular catheter infection control, urinary track infection control, and disinfection and sterilization. Subordinate scopes of performance of infection control showed highest points for pneumonia control and followed intravascular catheter infection control, urinary track infection control, isolation, disinfection and sterilization, and hand hygiene.

Perception of accreditation depending on general characteristics of nurses showed statistically significant differences according to age, the highest level of education achieved, total clinical experience, and position.
Awareness of infection control depending on general characteristics of nurses showed statistically significant differences according to age, the highest level of education achieved, total clinical experience, position, and experience of evaluation and accreditation.
Performance of infection control depending on general characteristics of nurses showed statistically significant differences according to age, the highest level of education achieved, total clinical experience, position, department, and experience of evaluation and accreditation.

In consequence of the correlation analysis among the perception of accreditation, awareness of infection control, and performance of infection control, there was significant positive correlation between the perception of accreditation and awareness of infection control as well as between the perception of accreditation and performance of infection control. In addition, there was significant higher positive correlation between awareness of infection control and performance of infection control.

In the regression analysis, performance of infection control was remarkably influenced up to 42.6% of the variance by awareness of infection control. It also showed additional improvement of 1.4% of the variance by adding perception of accreditation improvement that resulted in a total of 44.0%. Awareness of infection control turned out to be the most important factor that influenced performance of infection control.

The conclusion that has been reached in this study can be reasonably brief.
The result of this study showed that performance of infection control was highly enhanced according to nurses'' positive recognition of accreditation as well as their attaching importance to it. Nurses’ perception of accreditation was shown to be relatively positive. On the other hand, after accreditation they came to recognize that their feeling of solidarity with hospital authority might be hazarded due to meager or no compensation of their effort.
Such incentives as reducing nurses'' workload and increasing degree of understanding for work will lead to voluntary participation as well as positive attitude for the hospital.
After participating in accreditation, nurses'' infection control awareness was higher than infection control performance. The major factor affecting infection control performance proved to be infection control awareness. Accordingly, an effective training program developed by infection control specialist and application of it are highly recommended.